


Moon-tether

by laughingpineapple



Category: Pyre (Video Game)
Genre: Caretaking, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, Nondescript Witchy Practices, Titan Stars, background Tariq &/ Volfred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-09-26 12:23:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20389666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/pseuds/laughingpineapple
Summary: It is part of an alchemist's calling to investigate the hidden paths between the one and the whole, the base and the refined, the earthly matters and those of the moon - which is something of a muddy field of research when the moon is neither as empyrean nor as slick as he thinks he is. Bertrude, who among other things did in fact study alchemy between 521 and 617 AS, can and will take a challenge. She doesn't mind the inveterate flatterer, anyway, and Volfred wouldn't let either of them hear the end of it if he caught wind of these developments.





	Moon-tether

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Siver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siver/gifts).

> Happy Press Start dear recipient! Noxalas! \o/

Bertrude took the steaming bottle off her chest and ventured outside the Nightwings' encampment, toward the starlit lower summits of Mount Alodiel. Black bile, the melancholic humor, still collected dry and cold inside her spleen, dulling her eyesight and the spring in her slithering. Even with her best remedies, braving the snow-covered crags in those precious hours before the dawn was going to be an uphill battle, as her blood, black bile's complement in the body's balance, was rich and well-tempered but, by nature, cold. Yet she pressed on, under Soliam Murr's watch, coasting the peak that generations of pilgrims had carved into the last emperor's visage. It was paramount to put as much distance as she could between her and the Blackwagon before the _ other _ cold-blooded Nightwing would spring to wakefulness, loud and eager to prove his valor and absorb her wisdom and embark in half a dozen other quests at once.

The mountain was still silent. Thankfully. Bertrude had no time to waste fostering her distant kin, as the previous evening's travels had revealed to her nostrils a whiff of sulphur, pungent even through great distance, and she could not ask the triumvirate to halt their journey and wait for her to investigate. When she had interrogated her cards about it, the arcana had spoken of residual sins pooling at the end of flowing waters, and echoes tinged with blood. She would not forfeit the occasion to see for herself what manner of plants and mushrooms grew in such a place, and what encrusted old pains nourished them. A welcome diversion in this land of Scribe-blessings she had little patience for, rarefied and abstract as they were, and fading. So she made her way through the gleaming frost. She would be back by dawn. Her foraging would not set the group's schedule back by a single minute, not ever, certainly not now with the Golden Star of Soliam beckoning and the upcoming liberation fraying everyone's nerves. This principle of non-reliance was a prized tenant of her autonomy; it worked both ways, too, not letting Sandalwood's planning get in the way of her research, so here she was, making the most of the private hours of the day.

Bertrude stared at a moss-covered stone. She asked it for the way. North-northeast. She carried on. Before long, she felt that distant trace of sulphur again, but instead of the sound of flowing waters, she heard a deep, sustained note escape a crack in the rocks like a feeble lament.

In the middle of a small natural amphitheatre, shielded from the path and the valley below by tall jagged slabs, the lone minstrel was bent on his knees, clutching his lute. He played a single desperate note over and over, letting it resonate in the air around him as if he were trying to absorb the vibration, or on the contrary to sublimate himself in that pure, rigorous sound. His mantle lay abandoned on the grey rocks behind him, soaked by the rains that had been pouring until midnight - proving that he had left the Blackwagon before then and devoted hours to this solitary treatment or atonement. Tariq was unmoored, facing an abyss only he could see. He played the note again, as an anchor. Again. In the sky, beyond the heavy clouds, the first violet hues of a new day were gaining ground. Achenar, the Revealed Star, star of the atoning miller, granting the burden of philosophical inclinations to all who are born under it, shone atop their heads. It resonated with the white lute's lament, glimmering as if empathetic to the musician's plight, but whatever that connection was, it was not enough to sustain them. As the note ended, both the minstrel and the star looked duller, more tired, fading into the jagged grey rocks and Mount Alodiel's eternal snows. Nearby, Endriga the Widow glowed a morbid red.

"We have known thee to be capable of more cheerful tunes," said Bertrude, as a manner of greeting, standing on the entrance of his hideaway, as eavesdropping was bad manners and invited the fates to be rude in return.

Tariq turned toward her, exposed and unfocused at first, slowly reattuning himself to the material world around him. 

"Aye, madam," he said eventually, with a fixed, distant smile. "You speak the truth." He did not invite her in.

A few more turns down the trail later, Bertrude's sulphuric spring was close, but her thoughts had wandered miles away. If the cold snows of the far North were testing her resilience as a bog crone, she wondered, what could a blood-red sky mean to a herald of the stars? The memory of Tariq's restrained smile did not leave her. She regretted leaving her decks in the Blackwagon, as the cards' insight would have helped clear her mind. Her previous reading had spoken of blood echoes and ancient sins, and she wondered then if they could have referred to the stars in the sky rather than to the whereabouts of her spring - the red trail of the blood titan spoke for itself, while Achenar the atoning miller, as the legend went, lived with his monkeys at the end of the river. If her cards were feeling sorry for the herald, she couldn't fault them. 

By the time Bertrude made it back to the Blackwagon with her meager loot (nothing more than black almonds and craven-worms, plus three vials of the sulphuric spring itself), Tariq had already returned, prim and proper, if a little drenched. Next to him, Hedwyn was making breakfast, with captain bleeding-heart helping him out, while Sir Gilman was loudly proclaiming highlights of Wyrm history to the rapt vagabond girl and the liberation rite loomed over them all. Across that crowd, Tariq shook his head lightly, a shadow of a dismissal. Bertrude hissed. She was not in the habit of playing mother hen to anybody, her elders least of all. She picked up her supplies and hoped to find Volfred for the comfort and enlightenment of a quick morning chat.

*

Would it that she could tell herself this weakness in her limbs were banishment sickness, that the swelling of her stiff joints could be traced back to the workings of the metaphysical flame. Bertrude cursed under her breath as the Blackwagon soared above the Sea of Solis, and if her words fell all the way to the surface, there were deep waters underneath that could absorb them. Unrelenting snow kept hitting her face and amassing in the folds of her shawl, ahadstorm which had not let up since they left Alodiel and felt like it never would. She cursed some more, grateful, at least, for the way the cold eased her inflammation, which had nothing to do with the sacrality of the Rites and everything to do with plain old age.

Tariq sneaked up to her bearing a herbal infusion and the soft pragmatism with which he had long grown accustomed to treat generations of Nightwings. He was careful not to mention the source of the ailment that vexed her, if he noticed - but notice he did, since the infusion lacked the traditional honey bittercress, whose inflorescences burst like flame and remind the body of the pyre. Instead, she could relish in the bitter aftertaste of the shadwood, good for rheumatisms and for people who hate sweetness. Impeccable. 

Just as impeccable were his manners as he managed to make it feel like it was her idea to go back inside, safe from the snow, saying nothing, smiling and letting implications swerve the tide. He seemed more at ease in the comfort of the Blackwagon's common room, where he showed a glimpse of camaraderie, a smudged idea of a wink, and offered her a hard-boiled cloud-quail egg as a snack. In her magnanimity, Bertrude let him spoil her and revere her to his heart's content, as it seemed to relax him and take his mind off the dark tidings she had glimpsed at Emperor's Fall. Tariq, the lone minstrel, scribes-willed and stars-blessed, let his light slide off him to be with the Nightwings as their equal, to keep them company and bask in theirs. He pulled another tiny egg from the pantry and ate it as she ate hers, and he wasn't above her and he wasn't below her. Just distant. They talked of roots. He was surprised by the growth of mushrooms, and by how their growth follows lightning strikes; had his reservations about her explanations of the phenomenon, but would never presume to voice them. Kept them all under the brim of his hat, he did.

In the end, they agreed that, for the good of the Nightwings and of Sandalwood's plan (more for the latter than the former, they also agreed, tacitly, as a bit of a private blasphemy), they would have to do something more about Bertrude's muscles than that herbal infusion could accomplish. Tariq happened to know of a balm stashed somewhere in the depths of the Blackwagon, back from Oralech's days, fetched it and offered to massage her ailing arms. In the spirit of their strange little bond, Bertrude agreed. As he opened the small jar, the ointment's smell revealed to her the basics of the work of the ill-fated doctor, which she found agreeable. Then Tariq's hands touched her skin and the balance in her humors cracked like glass and all she could see was red, red, red, and Yslach's accursed mass growing like a rising planet. She snapped back, grabbing his wrist with her claws, glimpsing at the lines criss-crossing his palm, but they spoke a language she wasn't privy to.

"Thou art unwell," she said, unsure of how else to phrase the ponderous understatement.

Tariq waited for her to let go of his wrist, squared his shoulders, took his hat off and stared right through her. In that moment, he also wasn't above nor below her, but the distance was astronomical, eldritch emptiness between them. Bertrude stared back, taking in that dark expanse.

"Madam, I have my ways."

"Nnrrrghhh. Failing ways, minstrel, and the sky is bigger than any of us, and treacherous, as of late. Yet thou seekst no aid."

"Please, take comfort, if you will, in the will of the Scribes. For it filled the sky with rules and obligations, that we may use as guidance even as the stars themselves go out. I shall tend to the Rites, Bertrude, madam. And I shall see Sandalwood's plan come to fruition. Doubt this not."

"Nonsense. At present, thou art on thy knees. The Tattered Mantle shall strangle thee the very day it rises. This, thou callst aiding Sandalwood's plan? Hhhhngh."

"I would concur, if the struggle were mine alone… Although, surely it is known to you that such is not the case. I should think Celeste and I shall weather this darkness and find clarity in our respective roles, the fixed star and the wanderer, the mountain and the sky above. May she stand strong at the gate as Sung-Gries remembers what it was like to be the ground under her feet, and it is good that she is there and keeps the world-beast at bay… a feat which, as you recall, the Scribes faced jointly, while the other Titans, even the Astral-born, they each felled alone. It is good, in the end, that the chips of our strife fell in such balance… in a way. In truth it matters not that she believes this darkness to be my doing."

"Such is the underpinning of thy misery?" hissed Bertrude. "Our elder thou may be, receptacle of wisdoms long lost, but thou might stand to benefit from a lecture on unwanted solidarity..." she trailed off. "Does... Volfred know?"

Tariq shook his head twice, no and no. With his gaze away from her, the cosmos closed its rift between them and he simply stood there, alien, tired.

"I will say this… I would not presume to tell an alchemist what their job entails." As if to say: these processes and symbols you preoccupy yourself with (and by extension these amulets and curses, sorceries and favours, as alchemy was but one of Bertrude's fields of research), they require a tether, a connection to tie your subject to the path you endeavour to urge them on. I am no subject, however. I am a person like a flow of stars is a person, a distant glimmering of a presence whose borders are only clear when a cloud traces its own shape over them. Nothing in this world is mine. The night sky fills me; if it suffers, I suffer, and that is as simple a law of nature as the turning of the tide. Study it if it pleases you, write it all in books so the knowledge is passed on, but change it you can not.

And in that moment, as if Arizech himself were unfolding within him, he was pierced by a stabbing pain so concrete and corporeal that Bertrude could have taken out a vial and bottled it. She refrained from doing so, out of respect for him as a friend and fellow traveller, but finding little patience within herself for his resignedness. It could well be that he make it to the end, holding onto fading stars until the very last one hung in the sky, but at what price, and why. Bertrude was old-fashioned that way, in that her keen interest in punishments physical and immaterial was squarely aimed at her enemies, and garnered no pleasure nor insight from the suffering of someone who offered her cloud-quail eggs. 

She invoked a quick blessing, out of instinct and a contrarian spirit, to prove him wrong, but felt her words dissipate into thin air as she uttered them, finding nothing to hold onto, as if the room were empty.

So she rose to her full height to put a hand on his shoulder, which was soft and solid, and warn him in confidence, eye to eye.

"Thou speakst the truth. Tell not an alchemist what their job entails."

Tariq saw her slither away in a huff. He bit down the bitter taste of Plurnes rising up his throat like blood; feeling his knees go weak, he leaned on the solid wood of the Blackwagon. There was still light in the night sky and he would honor his duty, as always. This, too, would pass. And he would pass with it, but such was the way of things.

*

Two days later, in the middle of composing a mournful ballad, Tariq's fingers hesitated and went over the last stanza again. He saw himself looking at his work from a sudden distance, of the sort that takes mortals years to achieve, and found it self-absorbed and drab, tinged by an unholy red hue. In the blink of an eye, it was as if that fog had lifted, bringing along with it all the poison that had taken hold of all his affections, convictions and hopes.

He put the lute down, reached for his hat and hurried to find Big Bertrude.

"Madam?" he asked, finding her coiled over a bundle of dark feathers.

She answered with a drawn-out grunt, the threads of mystical energy flowing out of her cloak puffing in ill-restrained disdain.

"Shall I consider this all the elucidation I am entitled to and bid my leave?"

"For someone who claims to own nothing, minstrel, thou art quick to leave thy properties scattered all across the Blackwagon."

"I beg you pardon?"

She did not lift her head, but a dozen snakes turned around to stare at him.

"Thou wouldst know the weight of the immaterial, we like to think, if not for thy illness. For this reason, we believe, thou are excused. Are the strands of the affection of thy fellow travellers not real? Bother not to answer: any of them might have provided what this bog crone needed. In our old age, we just so happen to afford to be choosy, so we brought it up with Sandalwood, hhhhrrrrrrng. We were certain that he would supply us with a most exceptional ingredient, and he did. Thou hast thy thread, Tariq. Follow it home."

Eventually, she rose up to face him and pushed the bundle of feathers in his hand. Tariq ran a finger through the talisman which had cast a shield between him and the wrath of the titan stars, feeling its power, admiring its craftsmanship. Feeling that it was filled with Volfred's words for him: trust, compassion, warmth, respect, empathy. It was a solid bond, warm, and felt like home.

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Authoritative source on Volfred and Tariq's relationship, couldn't have made those words up myself:  



End file.
